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Only small patches of snow and ice are left at the Chacaltaya ski resort

Bolivia's largest city, La Paz, is currently enduring its worst drought in a quarter of a century. Glaciers in the surrounding Andean mountains are key to its water supply. Simon Parker visited the abandoned ski resort of Chacaltaya, where locals say they have been seeing changes in the climate for decades.

"I used to come up here as a child and play in the snow for hours, until my eyes and ears ached from the cold and altitude," says Felipe Kittelson, 63, while surveying the barren hillside before him.

"People would ski and sled here for seven or eight months a year. We used to shave off cups of ice and cover it in sticky syrup as a treat. This resort used to be covered in such deep snow, but now there's nothing but rock."

The 5,421m-high (17,785ft) Chacaltaya ski resort, once the world's highest, offered Bolivians a taste of European-inspired apres-ski in the heart of the Andes.

These days, however, it resembles an abandoned film set.

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The bar in the resort has long stood abandoned

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Rusty signs still remind visitors that this was once the home of the Club Andino Boliviano

Surrounded by shards of rusty shale, sticky tufts of pampas and a few hundred hardy llamas, Chacaltaya sits crumbling next to a vast furrow in the mountainside: the site of a once mighty glacier.

Chacaltaya glacier

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The view would have looked very different 20 years ago

Thought to be 18,000 years old

Bolivian scientists started measuring it in the 1990s

They predicted in 2005 that it would survive until 2015

But it shrank faster than expected and had vanished almost completely by 2009

Scientists think that the speed of its melting is an indicator of climate change

What used to be a buzzing attraction for La Paz's middle class is now a mini ghost town of oxidized ski winches, a spooky cafe and an eerie bar, still festooned with the holiday snaps of early-1990s skiers clad in multi-coloured jumpsuits.

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Pictures of more prosperous days still adorn the walls in the now-empty bar

In La Paz, water rationing has become a fact of daily life as in many districts, pipelines and reservoirs have been dry for more than a month.

Residents have to queue for many hours to receive their ration of water, siphoned into pots, pans, plastic bags and washing-up bowls.

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Signs on the lorries delivering water remind residents to "preserve water"

Washing vehicles has become a controversial practice, most people take a shower only once or twice a week and the city's once-emerald football pitches lay brown and dying.

Last week, the cities of Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City pledged to ban all diesel vehicles by 2025, but in a place like La Paz, where modern cars are rare and expensive, a similar decision is probably many decades away.

Back in Chaclataya, a handful of backpackers a day brave the extreme altitude to photograph this now-sad location.

For many, the setting evokes a feeling of contemplation.

"Back at home I think we have an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to global warming," says Olivia Taylor, 24, from the UK, while sitting on a bench once used by skiers.